Chocolate Matcha Marble Muffins

I was immediately drawn by these chocolate matcha cupcakes when I saw Mandy - Fresh from the Oven's post. Matcha (green tea) and chocolate are two of my favourites, be it in drinks, desserts, ice-creams... Mandy had also captured the pictures so well that I was really craving for one of the cupcakes! Although there are many yummy pictures of bakes and desserts all over food blogs that makes one drool, it is not often that there is one that makes me really want to eat it.

A couple of weeks ago, I finally made this matcha chocolate marble cake. I made them in mini and regular muffin size. Mandy had adopted Alice Medrich's low fat chocolate marble cake recipe and re-created her version of green tea with chocolate flavour. I've used Alice Medrich's recipe in my low fat vanilla yoghurt cupcakes and an oreo butter cake recipe before and it always turned out soft and fluffy.

The muffins puffed up nicely and the swirls were pretty! The muffins however, was a little dense in my opinion, with the texture as that of a pound cake, instead of a fluffy texture. I seriously do not know whether it was attributed to incorrect mixing or it was supposed to be dense. I always seemed to encounter denser cakes in marble cakes. Had I over-mixed while I was incoporating the two batters? Hmmm...anyone who had made this care to give me some advice?? :P

Still, the cake was moist, tender and the taste was good. It tasted even better after refrigeration, which somehow made the cake slightly drier and enhanced the chocolate taste.

Ingredients:

• 250g cups cake flour
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 1/2 tsp baking soda
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1 tsp instant espresso or coffee powder (I omitted)
• 1/3 cup dutch-process cocoa powder1
• 330g sugar (I've reduced it to suit my taste)
• 1 whole egg and 1 egg white
• 90g unsalted butter
• 250ml low fat yogurt
• 1 teaspoons vanilla extract
• 2 tsp matcha powder

Method:

1. Have all ingredients at room temp. Preheat oven to 350 degrees with rack in the lower third of the oven.
2. Prepare pan - Grease or line muffin cups depending on which you are using.
3. Use a whisk to combine four, baking powder, baking soda, and salt. Sift together. Set aside. In a small bowl combine the espresso powder, cocoa and 80g of the sugar with 62.5ml of water. Whisk until smooth. Set aside.
4. In another small bowl, whisk whole egg with egg white. Set aside.
5. Cut the butter into pieces and place in an electric mixing bowl. Beat for 1 minute to soften. Gradually add remaining 250g of sugar and beat at high speed for about 3 minutes. Dribble eggs in slowly, about 1 tbsp at a time, beating constantly for about 2 minutes. On low speed, beat in a third of the flour mixture. On medium-high speed, beat in half of the yogurt. On low speed, beat in half of the remaining flour. On high speed, beat in the rest of the yogurt and the vanilla.
6. On low speed, beat in the remaining flour.
7. Measure out 375ml of yogurt batter and mix into the cocoa mixture. Set aside.
8. Add matcha powder to the rest of the yogurt batter in the mixing bowl.
9. Use a large spoon to fill the bottom of the pan with about three quarters of the green batter placed in dollops. Cover the green batter with dollops of chocolate batter. Top the chocolate batter with small dollops of green batter spaced so that the chocolate batter shows through. Use a table knife to marble the batters together with a circular or zigzag motion (I used a toothpick to do the swirls in the muffin cups; be careful not to blend them too much.
10. Bake for 45-50 minutes for cake, (20-25 minutes for cupcakes) or until the cake starts to pull away from the sides of the pan and a toothpick inserted in comes out clean.
11. Cool for 10-15 minutes on a rack. Unmold the cake. Cool completely before serving or storing.

If you wanna refer to the measurement in cups, do refer to the recipe source - Mandy's post here. I followed everything according to the recipe, with the exception that I used 2 tsp of matcha powder instead of 1.5 tsp, depending on the quality of matcha powder you have.